


The Spender Defense

by Flywoman



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Gen, Monologue
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 1998-08-22
Updated: 1998-08-22
Packaged: 2017-10-18 04:22:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,995
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/184928
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Flywoman/pseuds/Flywoman
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A few words on Spudner's behalf by the author who made you feel sorry for Mulder's mom and will one day persuade you that the CSM is sexy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Spender Defense

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: Agent Jeffrey Spender belongs to Chris Carter and Ten Thirteen, and they can have him. I'm just experimenting with something a little different and putting a few words in his mouth. Don't sue. Somebody needed to make a case for the little whiner.
> 
> Thanks: To the talented Nascent, for encouragement, publicity, and friendship in lieu of a judicious swat, to FirePhile and The-I for reading, and to Angela, my thesis advisor, who demanded more.

That's a funny little triangle they've got going there. Bet Diana Fowley  
never suspected that coming back to their little basement lovenest after  
all these years would prove more hazardous to her health than a LEGATT  
assignment among terrorists. I feel sorry for her, even if she was  
as crazy as her former partner, even if she did effectively help him steal  
my first big case right out from under my arm. Sure, she screwed up, lost  
the kid, but she's lying in the hospital now not knowing where her next  
breath is coming from, and the other two escaped with nothing worse than a  
scorching. Do I sound too nonchalant about the sudden destruction of  
half a career's worth of work? It's a tough break for them, sure, but I  
look at it this way: their talents have been wasted for five years, and  
this might be just the kick in the ass they need to start over in the  
right direction midgame. Forget about this alien bullshit and employ  
their respective talents towards more worthy ends.

Hard to believe that Special Agent Fox Mulder was once the Golden Boy of  
the VCS. By the time I entered the Academy, his glory days were over and  
his nickname, once a mark of awe and admiration, had become a joke, a  
snigger around the water cooler. And he's single-handedly responsible  
for the change, him and his X-files, his dubious paranormal sidelights.  
Me, I started with the Bureau already weighed down with my own share of  
cock-eyed history, of family baggage. The last thing I wanted was to be  
saddled with a reputation like the one he's earned. And frankly, it's  
less than the crazy bastard deserves. Bottom line is, he scares me.  
Because of what he was, and because of what he has become. After all, if  
it could happen to a star like him, it could happen to anybody. Including  
a green rookie fresh out of the academy with big ambitions, a closet full  
of skeletons, and an unfortunate knack for pissing people off.

Of course Mulder's no slouch when it comes to provocation either. I am  
not a violent man, but that little scene in front of the suspect's  
cell came *this* close to making me lose it. For a second, I could  
actually feel the veins bulging under my fingers as I crushed his larynx.  
But I focused, I breathed. I didn't snap. Not even when he called me  
arrogant, stopped just short of accusing me of treason, and told me I  
should be taking notes as the Wunderkind got to work. Not even when he  
sent me out to fetch a meal like some delivery boy. "I will not tolerate  
that." That was my prisoner, my case, and I had been in that cell for six  
hours trying to shake a crumb of information out of that murderous  
scumbag. I don't know whether it would have made me feel worse or better  
if Mulder had actually managed to squeeze anything useful out of him. In  
the end, all he got for his immunity carrot were some vague hints about a  
missing link and a dead suspect.

I'd explicitly requested that he *not* be involved in my case, and the  
next thing I knew, he was barging into my briefing with no less than the  
A.D. himself as back-up. Christ. And then without having even seen the  
shot, he ordered me to roll the tape back so that he could prove that not  
only was the assassin's bullet not meant for the victim, but the  
12-year-old kid across from him was some kind of fucking psychic. Like I  
was his little projectionist instead of the agent in charge of the case,  
that big arrogant prick. I waited for the A.D. to put him in his place,  
but of course it never happened; not only did he not reprimand Mulder, he  
actually seemed to take the man's ridiculous claims seriously. I'd bet  
half my monthly paycheck that those two are having it on together in  
secret. I know Skinner doesn't look like the type, big ex-Marine and all,  
but Mulder's fey, a pretty boy with a big mouth. And how else to explain  
why he hasn't touched that partner of his after five years?

That partner. Agent Dana Katherine Scully. Oh my god. She may be well  
over thirty, but she's got the body of a goddess under those tailored  
suits. The first time I met her, it was all I could do to keep from  
falling all over myself like some fucking lovesick schoolboy. The thing  
that surprised me most was that she seemed so normal. Not *average* by a  
long shot, but nothing like that psycho she shared the basement with. She  
was deceptively soft-spoken, and smart as hell. I'm really disappointed  
in her after all that's happened, of course. Once I honestly thought I  
could trust her, that she understood why I wanted to keep her loony  
partner away from my mother. She claimed that I found them in that  
hospital room because my mother had contacted them, but I don't buy that  
for a second. I still believe that they were somehow responsible for my  
mother's disappearance, I don't care that the prints on the wheelchair don't  
match. I am perpetually amazed by the incompetence I encounter in what  
should be the most intelligent and efficient organization in the country:  
apparently my mother simply vanished without a trace. Nothing vanishes  
without a trace.

So, sure, Scully denies taking my mother to that bridge, but officially  
she doesn't even recall how she got there herself. Unofficially, though,  
is another story. I know she's been talking to that fucking snake-oil  
peddler Werber. I've been trying to extricate my mom from his  
pseudoscientific bullshit for years without any success, and now he's got  
Scully wrapped around his little finger too. Mulder used to be his  
patient as well - it didn't take to much digging to uncover *that* little  
connection. Just one big fucking happy family. But I digress. Scully  
went to see Werber, and word around the Bureau was that she came out with  
some insane alien conspiracy story - something with a UFO and faceless men  
setting people on fire. And my mother apparently ascended into heaven  
like a New Age Enoch in front of her eyes, like a divine hand plucked her  
right off the board. Oh, yeah. What's next, NE headlines screaming "FBI  
Agent confesses 'I was impregnated by aliens!'"?

So really it was only a matter of time before they got shut down after a  
stunt like that. I only advanced the inevitable by a year or two at  
most by going public with my indignation at the way this case was handled.  
And after all, they and that Moonunit Fowley managed to fuck up royally.  
I'm not just bitter because it was my first big case in the VCS. Thanks to  
their diddling around with immunity privileges and ESP tests, our suspect  
is dead, a kid is missing, an agent is critical, and the Bureau has been  
made an international laughingstock. They should have been demoted, even  
suspended, when their gambit ended in sacrifice and checkmate. Instead  
they've ended up with new assignments in opposite corners. Maybe The  
Powers That Be hope that they'll simmer down once they're separated, no  
longer each feeding off the other's madness. Sure. And maybe my father  
will come back and my mother will be found, miraculously returned to her  
senses, and we can all live in a little house with a white picket fence  
and be the poster children for the American nuclear family.

There's one thing that fuck Mulder doesn't seem to understand. I'm not  
out to get anybody, not even him - although I'd hardly expect a  
megalomaniac of his caliber to grasp that. I meant it when I told Mulder his  
days were numbered, but I said it out of fear and surprise more than  
anything. Where the fuck did he get off threatening *me*, asking me who I  
worked for when all along I've been trying to do my job here, no more, no  
less... Physical assault on a fellow agent is a fucking no-no. Par for the  
course for that asshole, though. I've read his records - official and less  
so. Some very interesting facts came to light last week when I opened my  
morning paper and a few excerpts from his classified file fell out. His  
background is absolutely riddled with slips like this one: Duane Barry,  
John Roche - even the A.D. for Christ's sake. The man's a fucking menace.  
It was a matter of simple justice to draw attention to his latest outrages  
and then sit back and watch it happen.

But I have to admit that there is a personal element in all this for me.  
I love my mother despite everything, the secrets, the psychotic episodes,  
the personal humiliation. I tried so hard to protect her from herself,  
from the press, from the contagion of that cult she got involved in. And  
I blame Mulder for that alien abduction theory she's concocted, for the  
starry-eyed beliefs in some fucking ordained mission of enlightenment  
that let her go off half-cocked from the hospital with God knows whom. Oh  
yes, I know, how can I hold him responsible when it's been going on since  
I was twelve, the stories, the memory lapses. She hasn't been able to  
hold onto a job for as long as I can remember; good thing she's such a  
genuinely sweet woman or she'd never have gotten a new one every time  
her employers caught on to the fact that she was certifiable. But reading  
about the Almighty Mulder's "experiences" really transformed her, gave  
solidity to her previously vague delusions, and (this is what I'll never  
forgive him for) led her straight to the tender ministrations of Herr  
Werber. I've tried to explain it to him so many times. I've tried to make  
him see that those stories were just her pitiable defense against the  
unbearable truth: that my father left us to fend for ourselves, that he  
wasn't coming back. But Werber's obviously got his own agenda.

And speaking of agendas - that smoking man. I'd give a lot to know whom  
he works for. More to know why he keeps playing the ludicrous Darth Vader  
routine. Granted, I've tried to block out many of my childhood  
memories, get past them in order to make something real out of my life,  
but he's definitely not the man I remember abandoning us. Why he shows up  
claiming to be my father after all these years is beyond me. What the  
hell does he want from me, and why has he become my self-avowed patron? I  
have no reason to believe he's not the guy Skinner was referring to, but  
why me? Was he really trying to help give me a boost in the Bureau by  
snagging me a high profile case... or was he deliberately setting me up to  
fail? Have I merely been a tool in his whole fucking operation, a  
mindless pawn marching self-righteously forward, eliminating pieces in my  
path with no idea of the stakes, the strategy, even the rules of the game?

But if there's one thing I've had to learn to get this far, it's patience.  
The truth is out there, and someday I will find it. And I do have a  
hidden pin to spring the next time he contacts me: meeting him outside the  
elevator that day, I noticed he reeked of ash, and it wasn't just the  
Morley's. And he had a case file folder under his arm. I didn't have  
time for more than a glance, but I'm sure the label said "Mulder." Thank  
God I had the sense to keep my mouth shut.

With a little strategy, even a pawn can win the end game from the right  
position.  
\-------------------------  
The End  
\-------------------------


End file.
